New Retail Complex Aimed at Bringing Glitz Back to Ginza

Tokyo’s Ginza district as seen the observation tower on top of the Matsuzakaya Department Store circa 1955.

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The upscale Ginza shopping district in central Tokyo is well-known for its prewar buildings, glittering nightlife and high rents for retailers. But as people gravitate toward newer big box stores in the suburbs, buying their brand name goods online and the younger crowds in the Shibuya and Roppongi districts, the area has fallen out of favor in recent times.

Hoping to bring Ginza back in vogue, property operators broke ground Wednesday on a giant retail complex where the iconic Matsuzakaya Ginza department store used to be located. Major developer Mori Building, a real estate investment arm of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton and two other Japanese companies plan to open the 46,000 square-meter building in November 2016.

The vast commercial space is expected to house a couple hundred tenants ranging from luxury fashion brands to hip cafes. The facility, along with office space and the Kanze Nohgaku auditorium, will be part of what will be Ginza’s largest multipurpose building.

After two decades of almost constant falls since the collapse of Japan’s asset bubble in the early 1990s, Tokyo land prices rose in 2013. Bolstered by a successful bid for the Olympic Games in 2020, the property market in Tokyo has been warming up as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s new economic policies, dubbed “Abenomics,” and the Bank of Japan’s big monetary stimulus helped stoke confidence in the economy.

“This Ginza project epitomizes an Abenomics recovery,” said Keisuke Yanagimachi, head of research for Japan at Cushman & Wakefield, a U.S.-based real-estate firm.

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